Devil's in the Details

Let's not forget the bigger story to come out of Rice's visit to the UK: she acknowledged "thousands" of tactical errors in Iraq.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accepted on Friday the United States had probably made thousands of errors in Iraq but defended the overall strategy of removing Saddam Hussein.

"Yes, I know we have made tactical errors, thousands of them," she said in answer to a question over whether lessons had been learned since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"I believe strongly that it was the right strategic decision, that Saddam had been a threat to the international community long enough," she added.

She ended up claiming that history will judge the effort for trying to bring peace and stability to the Middle East, not over the thousands of errors along the way.

I believe that she believes that. I believe that the whole admnistration believes that. That's why the postwar planning and tactical strategy has been so uniformly horrible. They don't think they're being judged on it, so why put any effort into it? So many people take this "they're right on the big picture" tactic in defending the Administration (I call it "The Hitchens Gambit") that it's in some way assured that the tactical effort will be slipshod as if it doesn't matter. That's like failing a math test and protesting because "I made the effort to TAKE the test, after all... what's the big deal about getting the questions wrong?"

This is kind of the same thing the Right always accuses educators of doing: rewarding effort and not testing. Of course, IOKIYAR. When things don't go their way, they'll always come up with an argument that suits their needs.